I used to love looking in game magazines for those photos people used to send in, pictures of the screen itself or the player in front of the screen, showing off a newly minted high score in the way our primitive forebears might have displayed some horned carcass. Of course, such images may be altered now: it is a grotesque fact of the modern world that we literally cannot believe our eyes. We can retain the elegance and beauty of the old ritual, though, by verifying the truth of it via Achievements and Trophies.

The overarching story-line of my D&D game involves my players traveling the world thwarting the machinations of Tiamat's many heads. I treat each head as a sort of self contained "season" with a beginning,middle and end. I also try and make each season different in terms of game play and storytelling.

A couple items:

You can actually play MAG now, most of the time I'd say, but it can be a harsh-ass motherfucking mistress.

Last week, when every blog took the opportunity to regurgitate a rancid, reeking mess of the year's "best" every Goddamned day, I wondered why we weren't partaking in this ritual. Those articles were barely worth reading the first time, and now they're shambling back, blind and grasping, like some headless groundskeeper?  That seems like a strong play, and preferable to actual work.  So, here they are: the most incisive, most poignant assertions made by the site in two-thousand and nine.  If you don't remember them, maybe you were drunk.  As you so often are.

The very first episode of our 4th Panel show went up today on PATV. This show is focused on Tycho and I writing the strip. It's much more like our Podcasts, only trimmed down quite a bit. I've already heard from lots of people asking about all the footage that gets cut from a show like this, the sort of stuff that would have been in the podcast. We have a lot of that, and I think the plan is to pack all that stuff onto the DVD when it comes out.

Holidays where people exchange thoughtful objects (or those which sport a pronounced turkey component) get a pass, but "enforced revelry" as a general concept is one I abhor. I have an especial loathing for chronofetishism. My prediction for 2010 is that we'll spend the entire Goddamn thing spitting blood and teeth into the sink. Happy New Year.

This is just a friendly reminder that the last day to get the early bird deal for PAX East pre-registration is December 31st (Tomorrow).

This is the kind of conversation we have after we've been separated for a week. The throughput gets redlined with a thorough, almost reptilian, probably repulsive masculinity. It's barely coherent, as data; it's more like an extended club mix of caged animal impulses. So, um... enjoy(?).

The Gallery is very NSFW!

This year's Dickerdoodle contest was awesome. You guys are a sick bunch of fuckers. Choosing a top three was no easy task but I've finally done it.

Was the Illithid ultimately able to steal Lolthmas? Can Lolthmas truly be stolen? The final page may contain these answers. We will try, I repeat try, to wait a year before doing that again. I italicized that second "try" to emphasize the difficulty therein.

I hope that you are having an unambiguously merry Christmas. Or a hopi Schneikel, or a gurd Nachtouph, or whatever they have where you are. I hope that whatever phenomenon best epitomizes your native winterfest is in plentiful supply.

We assumed that the first year of PAX East would be a slightly smaller event than PAX West. This is a new show in a new venue and we just figured it would take a few years for people to really warm up to it. Imagine our surprise when looking at pre-registration numbers, it became clear that PAX East would be as big if not bigger than our Seattle show. I can't believe I'm saying this about the first year of PAX East, but if pre-registration keeps going like this we will probably have to cap attendance just like we did this year in Seattle.

Page Two of "How The Illithid Stole Lolthmas" is now available. Hopefully that's a good thing? Every now and then I am allowed to write poetry for the site, and I relish the opportunity.  It's something I do more or less constantly anyway:  if I crack an egg, for example, typically the egg cracking is accompanied by a song which details the process. I turned in a couple papers for AP English in verse.

Prepare yourself for four full days of D&D related wankery. For edification purposes, "Illithid" is an even dorkier way to say Mind Flayer. As for Mind Flayers, this comic tells you pretty much everything you need to know.